The Letter
by WildFlower084
Summary: She said she could be very articulate on paper so she decided to write him a letter. Now comes with Booth's response.
1. Bones' Letter

I am so much better at expressing myself on paper, this is why I'm writing this to you. I just needed someone to talk to and I knew that you would understand. You've proved it to me so many times in the past months. What I'm about to write is really tough for me. There are so many things that I need to say that I hardly doubt I'll be able to write it all down. My hand (and my heart) is going to hurt way before that. But I'll do my best because you deserve to know. You confided in me after the funeral the other day, you told me about a very painful experience in your life and I think that I should repay you for this. So this is my painful experience.

My parents gave me a very beautiful life before they disappeared. We were somewhat rich, I'd say, but our happiness really laid beyond our money. They sent my brother and I to private school, they bought us a lot of stuff but Russ and I knew that our parents truly loved us no matter what and that they weren't just trying to buy our love.

You already know that they disappeared when I was 15 and you know that it devastated me. More than devastated me, actually, it traumatized me and scarred me for life. I had been really confident before my parents disappeared, confident in myself and in others. But when they disappeared, I felt like I had lost a part of myself and I didn't know who I was anymore. The social services put me in the foster system because they didn't have anywhere else to put me (my only alive relative was at that time incapable of taking care of me). My brother was already an adult so he only went out West to work and left me all alone here.

Being put in the foster system and being bounced from family to family made me feel like I didn't belong anywhere on this planet. Hell, in the galaxy! The first months were horrible. You remember what Shawn Cook said about the regular kids knowing you're a foster kid? It's true. I remember the first time I walked in my new school after my parents' disappearance. All the kids whispered to each other as I walked down the hall. It was horrible. Somehow they had found out about me. Then again, my parents' case had been all over the news so I shouldn't have been too surprised. It turns out, though, that it had been my foster sister who had squealed on me. She had told her friends, who had told others, that my parents had left me and my brother because they just didn't love us anymore. Kids would stop me in the hallways to ask me if it was true. I'd assured them that it wasn't but they just didn't believe me.

I didn't stay with this family very long though and I got sent, three months later, to another family. I was an only child there and I felt rather lonely. That's when I became more interested in books than in making friends. My foster parents were nice. They took care of me like I was their own daughter. My foster mother even let me call her Mom. But the social worker had told us that it was only a temporary thing, that they were really trying to find me a family but that there just wasn't any.

I spent six months with them before being shipped out of Washington to a small city in Maryland. I hated that family. They were truly cruel. They had three other children excluding me and abused one of them. Her name was Cassidy and she was only four years old. She had never known a real family, she truly had been bounced from place to place and finally, when she thought that she had finally found someone to love her, they would hit her and yell at her. My foster parents sort of abused me too when I think about it today. They called me stupid, made me doubt my intelligence and said that I was no good and that it wasn't surprising that my parents had abandoned me. Again, the kids at school were cruel to me. The teachers tried to do something, at least I think, but nothing worked. I felt so alone. I felt like there was no place in this world that I truly belonged to and it was horrible.

One night I had enough and I ran away from home. I hitchhiked back to Washington and went to see my grandfather, hoping that he was doing better and that he would be able to take care of me. Fortunately for me, he had enough strength to fight for me and the day I turned 17, he got full custody of me.

He died just before I got in to university. It really hit me hard since it was now official, I had no family left. I felt like a lost soul but, a couple of days before my first day of school, I made a decision: I decided that I was going to be strong. I tried to rebuild myself and my confidence from scratch. It took a while but I finally made it.

And I thought I had succeeded until you came along. You broke practically every barrier I had ever put up and the worst part is that I let you. Now I'm left with this shattered confidence and I feel... weak. Weak and terrified just like I had been the first day of kindergarten. Remember that first day when you examined your surroundings and everything just felt so much bigger and taller than you? Remember when adults seemed more like giants than regular size people? Ever since you came into my life and shattered my so-called confidence, this is how I have been mostly feeling. I just never showed it.

My heart aches so much, it's unbearable. Have you ever been in so much pain emotionally that it hurts when you breathe? If it has ever happened to you then you how I feel at the moment. Every breath I take is painful and I just sigh instead of breathing. It just feels so much easier, like it takes less strength to sigh than to breath normally. Even talking seems to take a whole lot of energy and I feel like I need to take a deep breath before I do. Why is it, Booth? How come it hurts so much? I really thought I was doing better, that I was over everything that had happened in my past but today I realize that I was just fooling myself. I realize that I haven't done such a good job at rebuilding myself, that I left out some important parts and that now I'm falling apart. But what can you expect? I just did the best that I could, Booth, I really did. Why doesn't anybody see this?

I know you probably don't have the answers to my questions and I don't expect you to answer them either. You just opened up to me so much that I just had to do the same thing. I just hope now you don't think I'm crazy.

I should get to bed. It's pretty late and I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow. Good night.

Your partner,

Temperance


	2. Booth's letter

_Dear Temperance,_

_I can't say that I'm really good at writing down my feelings; but just for you I'll do my best. First, I want to say that I was really touched by your trust. I know you, and I know that you don't open up that easily. So it must have taken a lot of courage for you to tell me all of that, but I'm really happy that you did. I know you'll be embarrassed and you might shy away from me when you'll see me after reading this, but I don't want you to worry. I won't judge you and I won't force you to talk about anything you don't want to talk about. I won't even mention what you wrote in your letter. Do we have a deal?_

_I'm not quite sure where to start. There are so many things I wish I could say to make you feel better, but I know it's not really going to help. The pain you're going through is something we all went through it at some point in our lives, but perhaps only for different reasons. You've probably had one of the most tragic reasons, and that's why I respect you so much. After all you've been through, you still didn't give up on life. So many people, Bones, have killed themselves for so much less than that. But you didn't, and for that, I'm proud of you. I can't promise that the pain will go away. It probably won't ever disappear completely, but I know that eventually time will ease your pain. It's been a very long time, I know, and you're wondering why it still hurts that much. It's probably because you never had closure. You never found out what happened to your parents and that's why it still hurts. The day you'll finally get those answers is the day you'll finally be able to let go. That day is going to come, I guarantee it. I'm not sure why, but I have a feeling that we'll find out what happened to your parents soon. But until then, just hold on tight like you've done for the past fifteen years. Don't give up._

_And we do see it, Bones. We do see that you did your best, that you always do your best. Anybody that isn't blind can see it. Maybe not at first but once we get to know you properly, we all see it. I don't know many people who could have succeeded at rebuilding themselves from scratch like you did. Then again, I don't know many people who had to go through what you went through. Just don't think you have to be strong and independent all the time. We never expected that from you and we never will. You have friends now, Bones, you have people. People who will be there for you and will help you carry the weight of your past so you don't have to carry it all by yourself. If you just let us, Temperance, we could do that._

_Let me tell you a story. It's about something that happened to me about a year ago. I met this woman who was anything but ordinary. You should have seen her Bones. She was cold, insensitive, infuriating; she had to have the last word in every single conversation that we had and she'd always lose herself in scientific mumbo jumbo lectures. Let's just say I wasn't too fond of her. Still, as the months passed, we learned to accept one another and we became some sort of friends. Of course, we bickered a lot and she still pissed me off, but she just grew on me. Looking back today, I wonder how I lived my life without her._

_That woman, Bones, it's you. Before I met you, I felt confident too. But from the first day we started working together (okay, maybe not the FIRST day), you made me reconsider everything that I knew. Before I met you, I only followed my gut feelings. Today, working with you, I'm forced to follow evidence and facts. You make me do stuff I wouldn't normally do: you made me threaten a gang member (we'll need to talk about this after), you made me walk out of a hospital while I was injured, and on top of that you made me remove evidence from a crime scene. Never, in a million years, did I think that I was going to do that, and for one woman at that._

_The point I'm trying to make is that you came a long way in the past year. You're so far from the cold and insensitive woman you used to be, and I couldn't be prouder of you. Not only me, all of your friends too._

_So if you ever need support and someone to listen, don't ever forget that you're not alone, not anymore. You have friends who love you, who care about you, and who will never let you down. And that's a promise._

_It's pretty late and I should stop here. But tomorrow, as you'll be reading this, chances are that I'll already be on my way to your office. So I'll see you in just a couple of seconds, okay?_

_Seeley_

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So, what did you think? Also just wanted to wish everybody a "happy" watching of Bones' season finale tomorrow. It's going to be great:-)


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